__NEWS__Great Britain_________________________
A Personal Perspective
A pro-life campaigner offers his unhappy thoughts on the British elections.
By Kevin Grant
The starting point for this report, oddly enough, is the CWR editor’s own back yard. I am his quondam UK correspondent, and I reported in these pages on the last British election, in 1997. I was impressed when Phil Lawler took a noble furlough from his desk to run as a pro-lifer against Senator Ted Kennedy last November. And I had read with respectful sympathy his “I’m back” editorial in December. He had attracted 45,000 votes from the Massachusetts electors, 2 percent of the total, with three-quarters of Catholic voters going for the pro-abortion senator.
I am now reporting on a British election in which 37 pro-life candidates, scattered across the 659 British constituencies polled just 9,453 votes among them—an average of 255, or 0.6 per cent of the vote, in the places where they stood.
How bad was that result? Were the pro-life political labors worthwhile? Did the campaigns achieve anything? Those questions take on extra urgency when we note that Ludovic Kennedy, a famous old television personality, polled over 1,000 votes as an independent pro-euthanasia candidate in Wiltshire.
The merit of having a political party running its own candidates is that they can ensure that the pro-life agenda is included in any media coverage they generate. Under our campaign rules, the candidates’ election addresses are delivered free to every household. This meant that 1.5 million leaflets bearing the pro-life message were delivered to homes, just for the cost of printing. That much the pro-lifers did achieve.
I had thought very hard about emulating your editor and running as a pro-life candidate in my own constituency of Chichester, a sweet apple of a town on England’s south coast. I was persuaded by good people to follow a more plodding course. When I look back I believe I was wrong and that I would have done more for the cause if I had joined Josephine Quintavalle’s gallant band and gathered a couple of hundred votes down here. I shall explain my reasoning on that issue below.
A blank TV screen
Josephine Quintavalle, who hails from New Zealand and leads the Prolife Alliance, contested the fashionable London constituency of Kensington and Chelsea, albeit polling only 179 votes against the successful Conservative candidate, Michael Portillo. (Portillo is now the front-runner among those seeking to succeed William Hague as the Conservative party leader.)
A word must be said here for William Hague in case the sneering treatment he received from the UK media sullied his reputation in other countries. This excellent Christian gentleman was pro-life and steadfastly supported marriage. He reiterated for his liberal interlocutors the irrefutable fact that the children raised in stable marriages are, by every available statistical standard, decidedly happier than those from other backgrounds. Phyllis Bowman, doyenne of Britain’s pro-lifers, defended Hague in the Catholic Herald, pointing out that the former Conservative leader opposed abortion, the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and several gay-rights initiatives.
Among the pro-life candidates, each had to come up with a deposit of £500. That is the amount payable by all candidates in a British election; the money is forfeited if the candidate does not win at least 5 percent of the vote. Of course all the pro-life candidates lost their £500. On top of that, the officials supervising the election returns can bar those who fall below the 5 percent threshold from making any public address, however brief, when the result is declared. Josephine Quintavalle, thus barred from speaking when Portillo was declared the winner in Kensington and Chelsea, put out what she would have said, on the Internet, that blackboard of the global village.
The most important vote brought before Parliament in the last session . . . was on human cloning. Michael Portillo, who has been elected tonight, and who may be the future leader of the Conservative party, didn’t bother to vote on it. . . . He has shown similar reluctance to commit himself on the life and death issues of abortion and euthanasia.
But the Prolife Alliance suffered a grosser gagging than that. The party had recruited enough candidates in Wales to be granted one political broadcast there. At the last minute—ensuring that there was no time to find alternatives—the “impartial” BBC banned the images the Alliance had planned to use in support of its commentary. As a result, the television screen was left blank for 4 minutes and 40 seconds, with just the sound tape being played. The political advisor to the BBC, Anne Sloman, had three times censored different versions of the Alliance’s broadcast without specifying which scenes she found objectionable. There had been vague allusions to “taste and decency”—which, considering some of the degrading material routinely shown on British television, only underscored the anti-life prejudice prevalent in British secular culture now.
The Prolife Alliance strongly protested the BBC censorship:
It is the most powerful and terrifying blank screen you are ever likely to see, because it masks not just the truth about abortion but also the cowardice and oppression of the Broadcasting Corporation. The images we wanted to show are from real life, they are true; how can this un-elected body determine whether or not the public should be allowed to see them. . . . The media are welcome to view the uncensored broadcast at any time and judge for themselves whether the BBC had the right to silence the freedom of expression of a political party. These are sad days for democracy.
No improvement
When the results were in, I checked several of the leading pro-life organizations, asking how they assessed the new Parliament. No one sounded encouraged; the consensus was that they were “not expecting any improvement.” Phyllis Bowman of Right to Life, a group that is active in parliamentary lobbying, says that on the whole Westminster remains anti-life in its composition, although there are a few new pro-lifers there. John Smeaton, national Director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) stated:
In some key marginal constituencies where SPUC mounted “value your vote” campaigns the pro-life candidates—from either the Labor Party, the Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats—won their seat. Sadly there were a few losses too. The overall make-up of the new parliament carries tremendous dangers for vulnerable human life, especially in respect to abortion and euthanasia. However, we are heartened by the return of some pro-life MPs defeated in 1997 and our members will be urging MPs to resist any moves which further undermine the right to life.
Life issues are mainly determined by “free votes” in the House of Commons —that is, votes on which the whips do not expect MPs to support the party line. But the make-up of the government itself can affect the way in which these votes are managed. Prime Minister Tony Blair—who says he is personally against abortion but unready to vote or lead in that direction—has brought more women into his cabinet and his Labor government. In the Labor party, women are expected to support legal abortion if they wish to be parliamentary candidates in the first place; potential candidates have to pass through an effective pro-abortion filter known as “Emily’s List.”
Going into this election the English and Welsh bishops said the first and most basic duty of the democratic state is to protect the lives of all citizens. Since abortion was legalized in 1967 the country has failed in this most fundamental obligation. The dignity of human life had been undermined further in 1990 when destructive experimentation on human embryos was legalized. “Although a General Election is not a single-issue referendum, a stance on certain key issues can be very revealing of a candidate’s overall values and priorities,” the bishops’ election briefing said.
The Scottish bishops wrote:
The right to life is the first and most essential right of all . . . Despite attempts to label us “single-issue” people, the Catholic Church is, on the contrary, concerned for human beings at all stages of life. . . . We must defend unborn children however conceived, who may be seen as unwanted or inconvenient, but who, from the moment of conception, have been given the gift of life.
A local ecumenical effort
Against this national backdrop I must relate my own experience in Chichester. I gained permission to address the local ecumenical body, Churches Together in Chichester, which mirrors a national initiative. I proposed that we, as the Christian community, should send questions on life issues to all candidates in the election. I circulated a list of queries compiled by Right to Life, but there was strong protest at the way they were worded; the meeting thought them loaded. (One delegate said there was a serious problem of overpopulation in the world.) I rewrote the questions at the chairman’s invitation and then a small group honed and broadened them further. They were sent.
At first only the Liberal Democrat replied—promptly and civilly, but in favor of abortion on demand, legalized euthanasia, and embryo experimentation. I chased the other candidates vigorously, eliciting thoughtful answers from the UK Independence Party and the Green Party. Nothing ever came back from the Labor candidate, although I besieged her office by personal calls, phone calls, and email. The Conservative candidate was apparently ready to speak to me, but could find no time. (The candidates had received over 100 such questionnaires from various interest groups, I learned.) I finally bearded the Conservative candidate just before his overwhelming re-election was declared. He promised to send his responses to our questions a little later.
The answers we did get back before the election were posted in some church vestibules, but the local radio and newspaper people expressed regrets that they would not find space or time to report them. It is a comment on the secularization of our culture today that the replies of election candidates to questions posed on behalf of an entire local Christian community are thought to be of no interest.
It was the undeniable failure of our efforts, so worthily and industriously undertaken, that has left me feeling that I would have achieved more if I had run as a pro-life candidate—or better, persuaded a like-minded young woman to do so.
As I finish this report, I am struck by three recent news items from this part of the world. First, a Dutch abortion ship has just docked in Dublin Bay to offer abortions offshore to Irish women; to date abortion remains illegal in the Irish Republic. Second, the Family Planning Association has been granted leave by the High Court to ask for a judicial review of Northern Ireland’s abortion laws. Abortion remains illegal there, too—resisted as fiercely by Protestants as by Catholics. Third, and the saddest item, Cardinal Tom Winning, the doughtiest champion of unborn life in these islands, has died following a second heart attack. When he was taken into hospital a nurse came up to him and said, "Hello, I'm Jane." "I'm Tarzan," he replied. By God, he has left us in the jungle.
Kevin Grant has been a frequent contributor to CWR.